By Ann Abel

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one hasn’t eaten well.” That Virginia Woolf quotation is the mantra driving a new breed of hotel cooking classes. After all, it’s much easier to eat well if you cook well. They’re going far above and beyond the basic demos and hour-long classes that many hotels offer, with highly trained chefs, state-of-the-art facilities and hours (if not days) of hands-on instruction.

Now that food is a primary motivation for travel decisions, it’s only logical that culinary skills would be a prime souvenir. Which would you rather take home: a few tchotchkes and photographs or the ability to replicate that delicious homemade pasta you enjoyed on a balcony overlooking the Tuscan countryside?

Here are seven hotels whose intensive, immersive culinary schools are raising the bar on culinary programs.

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